he
moon—an object of wonder since the dawn of mankind. It lights up the night
sky like nothing else in the heavens, and appears as if it regularly changes
shape. As we shall see, it is well designed for life on Earth, while its
origin baffles evolutionists.

The Moon's Origin

Although
there are many different ideas on how and when the moon formed, no scientist
was there at the time. So we should rely on the witness of One who was there
( cf . Job
38:4 ), and who has revealed the
truth in Genesis
1:14–19 :

14 And God said, Let there be lights
in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let
them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:

15 And let them be for lights in the
firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.

16 And God made two great lights; the
greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night:
he made the stars also …

19 And the evening and the morning
were the fourth day.'

This passage
clearly states that God made the moon on the same day as the sun and stars —
the fourth day of Creation Week. It was also created one day after the
plants. This order of events is impossible to reconcile with
evolutionary/billions of years ideas.

The Moon's Purpose

The
answer's in Genesis! A major purpose is to light up the night. The moon
reflects the sun's light on to us even when the sun is on the other side of
the earth. The amount of reflected light depends on the moon's surface area,
so we are fortunate to have a moon that is so large. It is over a quarter of
Earth's diameter—far larger in comparison with its planet than any other in
the solar system. [
1 ] Also, if it were much smaller, it would not have
enough gravity to maintain its spherical shape. [
2 ]

Another reason
for the moon is to show the seasons. The moon orbits the earth roughly once
a month causing regular phases in a 29½ day cycle (see diagram below). So
calendars could be made, so people could plant their crops at the best time
of the year.

An
important feature is that the moon always keeps the same face towards the
earth. [
3 ] If different parts were visible at different
times, the moon's brightness would depend on which part was pointing towards
the earth. Then the 29½ day cycle would be far less obvious.

TIDES

The earth's
gravity keeps the moon in orbit, and is so strong that it would need a steel
cable 850 km (531 miles) in diameter to provide an equivalent binding force
without breaking. The moon exerts the same force on the earth. But the force
is somewhat higher on the part of the earth nearest the moon, so any water
there will bulge towards it—a high tide. The part furthest from the moon is
attracted the least by the moon, so flows away from the moon (and Earth's
centre)—another high tide on the opposite side of the earth. In between, the
water level must drop—the low tides—see diagram below. As the moon orbits
the spinning earth, there is a cycle of two high tides and two low tides
about every 25 hours.

Tides are vital
to life on Earth. Tides cleanse the ocean's shorelines, and help keep the
ocean currents circulating, preventing the ocean from stagnating. They
benefit man by scouring out shipping channels and diluting sewage
discharges. In some places, people exploit the enormous energy of the tides
to generate electricity. [ 4

The moon's size
and closeness to Earth means it has the greatest tidal effect on Earth. Even
the sun has less than half this effect, and the effect of the other planets
is negligible.* When the sun and moon are aligned, their combined gravity
results in strong spring tides. When they are at right angles,
their gravity partly cancels, resulting in weak neap tides.

* Gravitational force between two objects is
given by F = Gm 1 m 2
/R 2 ,
where G is the gravitational constant, m 1 and
m 2 are the masses of the objects, and R is the
distance between their centres of mass—an inverse square law . But
the tidal effect drops off far more quickly, with R 3 —an
inverse cube law. If more people had known this, they wouldn't have
been scared by knowing all the planets would be roughly aligned in 1982,
when many predicted this would lead to disaster.

Nice to Visit—But to Live?

One of the most
dramatic events of our time was the landing of men on the moon. However,
they confirmed that it is a lifeless, airless world, with huge temperature
extremes and no liquid water. From the moon, Earth appears as a bright
blue-and-white object in the black sky. Earth is the planet God has designed
for life. Man may be able to live on other worlds one day, but it will be
hard to make them habitable.

Many people
don't realize that the man behind the Apollo moon mission was the
creationist rocket scientist Wernher von Braun. [
5 ] And another creationist, Jules Poirier, designed
some vital navigational equipment used in the space program. [
6 ]

How Long Has the Moon Been Receding?

Friction by the tides is slowing the earth's
rotation, so the length of a day is increasing by 0.002 seconds per century.
This means that the earth is losing angular momentum . [
7 ] The Law of Conservation of Angular Momentum
says that the angular momentum the earth loses must be gained by the
moon. Thus the moon is slowly receding from Earth at about 4 cm (1½ inches)
per year, and the rate would have been greater in the past. The moon could
never have been closer than 18,400 km (11,500 miles), known as the Roche
Limit , because Earth's tidal forces (i.e., the result of different
gravitational forces on different parts of the moon) would have shattered
it. But even if the moon had started receding from being in contact with the
earth, it would have taken only 1.37 billion years to reach its present
distance. [
8 ] NB: this is the maximum possible age—far
too young for evolution (and much younger than the radiometric ‘dates'
assigned to moon rocks)—not the actual age.

Could the Moon Form by Itself?

Evolutionists (and progressive creationists) deny the moon's direct creation
by God. They have come up with several theories, but they all have serious
holes, as many evolutionists themselves admit. One astronomer said,
half-jokingly, that there were no good (naturalistic) explanations, so the
best explanation is that the moon is an illusion! [
9 ]

• Fission Theory , invented by the astronomer George Darwin (son
of Charles). He proposed that the earth spun so fast that a chunk broke off.
But this theory is universally discarded today. The earth could never have
spun fast enough to throw a moon into orbit, and the escaping moon would
have been shattered while within the Roche Limit.

• Capture Theory —the moon was wandering through the solar system,
and was captured by Earth's gravity. But the chance of two bodies passing
close enough is minute; the moon would be more likely to have been
‘slingshotted' like artificial satellites than captured. Finally, even a
successful capture would have resulted in an elongated comet-like orbit.

• Condensation Theory —the moon grew out of a dust cloud attracted by
Earth's gravity. However, no such cloud could be dense enough, and it
doesn't account for the moon's low iron content.

• Impact Theory
—the currently fashionable
idea that material was blasted off from Earth by the impact of another
object. Calculations show that to get enough material to form the moon, the
impacting object would need to have been twice as massive as Mars. Then
there is the unsolved problem of losing the excess angular momentum. [
10 ]

When Day Becomes Night...

One of the most fascinating sights in the sky is
a total eclipse of the sun. This is possible because the moon is almost
exactly the same angular size (half a degree) in the sky as the sun—it is
both 400 times smaller and 400 times closer than the sun. This looks like
design. If the moon had really been receding for billions of years, and man
had been around for a tiny fraction of that time, the chances of mankind
living at a time so he could observe this precise size match up would be
remote. [
11 ]

Conclusion

The moon is
a good example of the heavens declaring God's glory ( Psalm 19:1 ). It does what it's designed to do, and is vital
for life on Earth. It is also a headache for evolutionists/uniformitarians.

References

[1] Apart from the remote Pluto/Charon
system.

[2] The most stable shape for a massive
body is for all parts of the surface to be the same distance from the centre
of mass, i.e. a sphere. The pressure inside the moon is ten times the
crushing strength of granite, so any large unevenness would be crushed into
shape. Such a sphere may bulge at the equator if the body is spinning fast
enough.

[3] That is, its rotational period is
identical to its (synodic) orbital period. This is true of many moons in the
solar system, because the planet's gravity is always stronger on the nearest
side (a tidal interaction), and this will eventually lock one side so it
will always face the planet. The effect is enhanced if one side is denser
than the other.

[7] Angular momentum = mvr, the product
of mass, velocity and distance, and is always conserved (constant) in an
isolated system.

[8] For the technical reader: since
tidal forces are inversely proportional to the cube of the distance, the
recession rate (dR/dt) is inversely proportional to the sixth power
of the distance. So dR/dt = k/R 6 , where k is a constant = (present speed:
0.04 m/year) x (present distance: 384,400,000 m) 6 = 1.29x10 50 m 7 /year.
Integrating this differential equation gives the time to move from R i to R
f as t = 1 / 7k (R f 7 — R i 7 ). For R f = the present distance and R i =
the Roche Limit, t = 1.37 x 10 9 years. There is no significant difference
if R i = 0, i.e. the earth and moon touching, because of the high recession
rate (caused by enormous tides) if the moon is close. See also Don DeYoung,
‘The Earth-Moon System', Proceedings of the Second International
Conference on Creationism , Vol. II, pp. 79–84, 1990.

[9] Irwin Shapiro in a university
astronomy class about 20 years ago, cited by J.J. Lissauer, Ref. 10, p. 327.
Lissauer affirms that the first three theories have insoluble problems.

[10] Shigeru Ida et al., ‘Lunar
accretion from an impact generated disk', Nature 389
(6649):353–357, September 25, 1997 ; Comment in the same issue by
J.J. Lissauer, ‘It's not easy to make the moon', pp. 327–328.

[11] See also D.R. Faulkner, ‘The
angular size of the moon and other planetary satellites: An argument for
Design', Creation Research Society Quarterly 35
(1):23–26, June 1998.

[12] From John C. Whitcomb and Donald B.
DeYoung, The Moon: Its Creation, Form and Significance ,Baker Book
House, Grand Rapids , Michigan , 1978. This book provided many ideas for
this article.

[13] The sidereal period is the time for
a complete orbit of the moon around the earth, relative to an observer
outside the solar system. The phase cycle (synodic period) is the time taken
for the moon to return to the same orientation towards the sun. It is longer
because the earth moves about 1/13th of the way in its orbit around the sun,
so the moon must travel further than one true lunar orbit for a given
orientation to recur. (The assistance of astronomer Dr Danny Faulkner is
gratefully acknowledged).